Darkside - Prayers In Doomsday

Nima : After being active for nearly twenty years (the band was founded in 1991) and releasing several demos, these Brazilians self-released their first long player, 'Prayers In Doomsday', in 2010. The album was again self-released earlier this year, but with a different cover artwork and even a different track list. Due to the fact that there is little mentioned about this in the band's bio, we treat this 2012 version as a new release.

That fact that Brazilians have mastered the arts of thrash well has of course become more and more obvious during the last three decades, and Darkside confirms that once again with eight powerful old-school thrashers. What we get here is best described as a combination of US and German thrash with a flirt towards traditional heavy metal. Think of a combination of bands such as Slayer, Exodus, Testament, Overkill, Destruction and similar bands and you know approximately what you can expect. The songs are well-composed and the music sounds quite technical at some points, and contains the necessary variation. The riffs constantly invite you to bring out the air guitar and start banging your head, and even though there is enough room for melody, they keep the pace up.

Vocalist Alex Eyras has a good, strong and clear voice, which is suitable for both thrash and power metal, and sees to even more variety. They also haven't try to keep things as old-school as possible, and the album sounds contemporary without losing the old-school charm. Therefore the band has the ability to apply to both old-school and modern thrashers. Okay, everything here is more or less done by the book and there are no signs of originality or innovation, but that doesn't spoil the fun. Seeing that the production is also perfectly fine, you have yourself a good thrash album here, guaranteeing a 35-minute sonic pleasure.